Such a device is known from European Patent 1 073 598, for example. The known palletizing device has a conveyor zone for the objects being palletized, namely bottles, leading from a delivery device to a pallet loader. The bottles are conveyed from a bottle producer to a collecting and transposing device where they are grouped and accommodated as a group, i.e., palletizing layer in an intermediate carrier. The intermediate carriers filled with bottles then go over a conveyor zone to the pallet loader, where they are stacked in layers on a pallet, with or without the intermediate carrier(s). Between the collecting and transposing device and the pallet loader, there are inlets and outlets leading to an intermediate storage for loaded intermediate carriers. The intermediate carrier is equipped with a shelf conveyor which takes the loaded intermediate carriers to the shelving of the intermediate storage and fetches them from the shelving for reintroduction into the conveyor zone. Such a device is relatively complicated and is profitable only in cases where large quantities of objects must be stored temporarily, possibly for longer periods of time.
A palletizing device having a similar intermediate storage is known from German Utility Model DE U 299 13 237. The intermediate storage of this conveyor device is formed by a suitably dimensioned grouping device for assembling objects into groups on the one hand and for collecting these groups on intermediate carriers or trays. In addition, another storage having a larger capacity is also provided, this one being loaded by the grouping device. Objects are introduced onto the conveyor belt and removed from it at different branch points of the conveyor zone that are passed on the way to the pallet loader.
Finally, German Patent DE A 32 35 223 discloses a device for transporting containers, e.g., bottle boxes, through treatment stations between which buffer magazines are provided at various locations in the conveyor zone; the containers holding the intermediate carriers are raised upward out of the conveyor zone in these buffer magazines so that they can pass through the downstream intermediate carriers.
The object of the present disclosure is to create a device for palletizing objects equipped with an effective buffer device of a simple design.
With an inventive palletizing device, no special input and output devices for the buffer are required because of the “double function” of transposing device and pallet loader, which cooperate directly with the normal conveyor zone as well as with the buffer. Therefore, the result is a compact and inexpensive design that functions reliably.
The distributor device should be mentioned in particular; it permits reliable loading of the transposing device with multiple rows of objects, formed from an outgoing single row emerging at a high speed from a manufacturing machine, e.g., a blow molding machine for PET bottles. This distributing device can also be used to advantage with other palletizing devices or the like.